All You Need to Know About Docs — Tips on Creating the Best Info Marketing Documents

Dear Info Marketers,

An old colleague in the publishing world once told me about a trip he took to Mark Twain’s former residence in upstate New York. He talked extensively about seeing one of his writing idols’ home and the thrilled feeling he got exploring it.

One thing he talked with admiration about was Twain’s writing space. He got to see the room, desk, chair, and typewriter that Twain produced a large body of work from. He joked about how tough it must have been; all writers make spelling and grammar errors, and in the age of digital publishing and printing, the idea of re-typing whole pages on a typewriter to correct one error seems ludicrous. Mind you, my colleague joked, with the fear of having to do all that re-typing, I’ll bet he didn’t make too many mistakes!

Indeed. And who knows…it may have created a discipline and originality in writers of the past that we can’t even imagine of today. But that’s okay. Today things are different and we can use today’s technology to our advantage without sacrificing any quality at all.

Creating professional documents, whether they are newsletters, information products, or even e-mail messages, requires time and care on the writer’s part. But there are some great digital and non digital tools to help.

Here are some products I like:


--Scrap paper and a pen: No question about these as for my nickel in the jukebox, the old faithful pen and paper is still the best way to start creating documents. I always keep either a pad or folded bit of scrap paper in my coat pocket with a pen clipped to it whenever and wherever I want to jot down ideas or passages. I advise you to get into this habit as well.

--A voice recording device: This sounds pretentious, like the clichéd image of a screenwriter or mad scientist hidden away in some works space someplace, concocting crazy ideas. But a former colleague who often had trouble writing at the spur of the moment used an old tape recorder from his college days to record ideas he had while at home. He would play the tape back at the end of a week or random recording and transcribe the ideas he liked best. His success proved this method worked for him. It might also work for you if you have similar problems. As a bonus, many recorders now do not require tape and can be kept in your pocket like a pen, ready to use at a moment’s notice.

--Microsoft Word: I always thought this program was taken for granted by a great number of people today. But twenty years ago when my dad got our first personal computer, there was no program that you could access within minutes, and that had everything from font changing and table drawing tools, to text inversion and colour adding tools. Word has gotten me through many years of document creation and has been useful in so many ways. If you ever go to buy your first computer or laptop, make asking Is Microsoft Word on this? your very first question to the salesman.

--Adobe Acrobat: Adobe creates a lot of products for document and visual image creation/manipulations. I was fortunate in my former job to have been trained in it during a two day session. I learned how to create portable digital files (PDF) from scratch and how to transfer them electronically, over the Internet, etc. You can now download Acrobat from the Internet and I would advise you look into this if you wish to send out information products and documents electronically to your clients and colleagues.

--A Good Online Publishing Program: If you get or are already savvy enough with Internet publishing formats, invest in a good online publishing program. These programs come with an interface where you can transfer all the content from your existing Word documents onto and add the appropriate online markup to see how the pages will look online. They also come with an online publishing mechanism where, provided you already have a domain registered online, you can publish your pages immediately. We used to use Ultraedit programs before, but for personal use, Dreamweaver is a good investment.


The expression that it’s all in your hands truly applies to the information marketer that creates his or her own documents. The processes are cheap, accessible, and do not consume much time. Once you have your content and visual ideas prepared, you can literally sit down and create the documents you want and that best present you and your product to the world.

Take care and have a good week,

J.